More than 400 people turned out Feb. 7 for a lively and often tense forum
that questioned the selection of campus speakers and what kind of dialogue
with them is appropriate.

The student-organized forum, “Intellectuals and the Institution,”
continued a discussion that has been simmering since last fall, when the
Woodrow Wilson School’s 75th anniversary celebration featured several
government and military officials, including Secretary of State Condoleezza
Rice. After the event, 128 students and faculty members signed a letter
to the Daily Princetonian, criticizing the University for a “trend”
of inviting to campus guest speakers who spoke for the Bush administration.

One forum organizer, Fernando Montero ’06, said the students “oppose
the persistent exclusion” of speakers who are unaffiliated with
either party in government, and that there is “not meaningful interaction
between speakers, faculty, and students.” (For an interview with
Montero, see page 72.) Students and faculty were particularly distressed,
he said, by remarks made by Woodrow Wilson School Dean Anne-Marie Slaughter
’80 at Rice’s keynote address, when Slaughter said the secretary
“exemplifies” the University’s values.

Montero also criticized Slaughter’s introduction of another keynote
speaker, Lt. Gen. David Petraeus *87, the former head of the Multi-National
Security Transition Command in Iraq. In that instance, Slaughter joked
that Petraeus responded to her invitation to speak by sending an e-mail
at 4:30 a.m. during the battle at Fallujah; Montero said this made light
of the suffering that was taking place.

Slaughter, one of three panelists, defended the school’s record
of bringing speakers of all views, noting several critics of government
who have lectured recently. She said the Wilson School unsuccessfully
had attempted to schedule speakers with different views for the anniversary.
“If you look overall at whom we invite, it is a very broad spectrum,
and we want it that way,” said Slaughter, who has expressed harsh
views of the Bush administration’s foreign policy in her own writing.

She said her remarks about Rice referred to the secretary’s career,
not her policies. Rice “took her expertise in the academy and put
it into service in government,” a Princeton value, Slaughter said,
adding, “Inviting someone does not involve endorsing their policy.”
But she said the forum did give her a better understanding of how her
remarks about Rice and Petraeus came across.

The other two panelists were religion professor Cornel West *80, who
had signed the letter of protest; and Mark Bruzonsky *73, founder of an
Internet site called Mid-East Realities. Bruzonsky called for an independent,
student-run organization to bring a broader spectrum of “world-class,
independent scholars and journalists” to campus. “At the 75th
anniversary, everyone was force-fed a steady diet of top political personalities,”
he said. “This is not, in my view, in the nation’s service.
And it’s certainly not in the service of all nations.”

The exchange got nasty when Bruzonsky accused Slaughter of “using
the University as a stepping-stone to personal and political power”
and pointedly asked whether she intended to seek a government post. Later
in the forum, Slaughter responded that she felt the question was inappropriate
because “the accusation there is not about ambition; it’s
about integrity.” But she noted that she encourages students to
go into government service — and that, at some point, she hoped
to do so herself. “There is no shame in saying you want to serve
the nation in any way,” she said.

West generally stayed out of the fray, while calling for more student
interaction and “Socratic activity” when speakers visit: “If
you want to spew your propaganda, go on talk radio.”

After the forum, Syon Bhanot ’06, a Woodrow Wilson School major,
disagreed with Bruzonsky’s claim that few independent speakers visit
campus. Bhanot cited a December speech by Philip Gourevitch, a journalist
who broke important stories about the Rwandan genocide. Bhanot added that
only a few students attended the event.

In February, former Princeton professor Ben Bernanke became
chairman of the Federal Reserve, taking the reins from 18-year veteran
Alan Greenspan. While Greenspan’s record was extraordinary, his
methods remain largely unknown, according to Professor Alan Blinder ’67,
who served as the vice chairman of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors
from 1994–96, and Ricardo Reis, an assistant professor of economics
and public affairs. Blinder and Reis, who presented a paper about Greenspan’s
term at a Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City symposium last August, spoke
with PAW’s Brett Tomlinson about the outgoing chairman’s legacy
and the future of the Fed.

In your paper, you said that Greenspan “has a legitimate claim
to being the greatest central banker who ever lived.” What sets
him apart?

AB: Some of it is the style. But in addition to that,
it’s his incredible longevity — he was by far the most senior
central banker in the world — and also the success of that period.
There are several metrics of this success, but one very obvious one is
the near-absence of recessions in the Greenspan era. I would count it
as one recession and one recession-ette. ... That’s very little
in 18 1/2 years.

RR: And at the same time, inflation has been very low.
He really kept the inheritance of Paul Volcker [’49] in that sense.
He has solidified the expectations of low inflation that many Americans
have nowadays.

There were many challenges in Greenspan’s 18 years at the
Fed. Does any one challenge stand out?

RR: One episode where he deserves a lot of credit is
detecting the productivity acceleration of the mid-1990s. In ’95
or ’96, if you had polled a series of economists either at the Fed
or in academia, most people would have argued that nothing was happening.
Indeed, even as late as 2001, the statistical evidence for a break in
productivity was very low, and there was still heavy debate. Now, in 2006,
we pretty much agree that it did happen in ’95. Greenspan, in ’95,
called it, and he set monetary policy according to that. There was a great
call. Was it a stroke of luck or a stroke of genius? Who will ever know?

Is Bob Woodward’s depiction of Greenspan as the “maestro,”
tuning the various instruments of the economy, an appropriate way to think
of him?

AB: [It is] pretty accurate. I think it actually understated
how politically astute and adept he was. I think to this day people don’t
appreciate what a good “politician” he was — of course
he’s not a literal politician, and he wouldn’t be very good
on the stump, shaking hands and things — but what a good Washington
operator he was.

You made a clear distinction between Greenspan’s record and
his legacy. Why don’t the strengths of his record necessarily carry
over into a legacy?

AB: We see the record — it was an excellent one.
So now the question is, “How did he do it?” To have a legacy,
people have to answer [that question]. ... Unfortunately, there isn’t
what I’ll call euphemistically an “instructions manual.”
We tried to provide one with this paper. Greenspan was at the conference,
and he wasn’t shaking his head no. I talked to him a little, and
he was pretty much accepting of what we had written about him. But as
I said to him, “Wouldn’t it have been much better if it came
from you?”

In spite of his dour appearance and convoluted speeches, Greenspan
became a pop-culture figure. Does Ben Bernanke have star quality, or is
he just a central banker?

RR: Would you ever have guessed that Greenspan had
that quality?

AB: I’m not sure that Greenspan did. He was around
so long and was so successful, and he also had the ability to turn a cryptic
phrase, like “irrational exuberance.” Out of Bernanke, you’re
going to be hearing much more plain-spoken English prose. ... He’ll
say what he means. Greenspan almost seemed to take delight in people trying
to figure out what he meant. It’s a little like taking one of those
Beatles records and playing it backwards.

“The Pew poll that came out a couple of months ago says
that basically Americans don’t know any more about Islam today than
they did before 9/11. Lack of knowledge is lack of respect. We don’t
even respect Islam enough to understand it. ... Respect elevates our discourse.
It gives us a reason to solve things.”

Robert A. Seiple, the State Department’s first ambassador-at-large
for international religious freedom and founder of the Institute for Global
Engagement, speaking Feb. 8 in Robertson Hall on “The New Alliance:
The Moral Imperative Meets Realpolitic.”

A photo exhibit on CHILDHOOD OBESITY is on display
in the Bernstein Gallery in Robertson Hall through March 31. The Woodrow
Wilson School commissioned freelance photographers Joan Liftin and Craig
Terry to document factors that encourage the problem. The gallery is open
weekdays 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. “Diet in Decline: Can America’s
Over-nutrition Crisis be Reversed?” will be discussed Monday, March
13, at 4:30 p.m. in Bowl 016 of Robertson Hall by Kelly Brownell, director
of the Yale Center for Eating and Weight Disorders, and Roger Platt, direct
of New York City’s Office of School Health. “Childhood Obesity”
is also the topic of the spring issue of “The Future of Children”
journal, published by the Wilson School and The Brookings Institution
and available without charge March 14 on the Web at www.futureofchildren.org.

The legal and legislative activities that took place during the final
months in the life of TERRI SCHINDLER SCHIAVO, who died
in March 2005 after living more than a decade in a persistent vegetative
state, will be analyzed Wednesday, March 8, at 4:30 p.m. by Daniel N.
Robinson, faculty fellow in philosophy at Oxford and former Georgetown
professor. His talk, “Schiavo and the Shibboleth of Privacy,”
will be held in Room 104 in the Computer Science building.

Alan Walker, professor of biological anthropology at Penn State, will
speak Thursday, March 9, at 8 p.m. in McCosh 50 on “THE
HUMAN BODY AS AN EVOLUTIONARY PATCHWORK.” The Louis Clark
Vanuxem lecture will describe how parts of the body have developed over
time.

Architect’s
rendering of a new dorm for Butler College. (Courtesy Pei Cobb Freed
and Partners)

Butler
dorms to be razed, replaced

Beginning in June 2007, the University will demolish the bulk of Butler
College to clear space for a new residential complex that University Architect
Jon Hlafter ’61 *63 said will fit “more comfortably”
into the southern portion of the campus.

Designs for the project show five modern brick-and-limestone residence
halls, two to four stories in height, set in a pair of three-sided arrangements.
The western group will surround a relatively flat area with traditional
crossing walkways, while the eastern enclosure will incorporate a terraced
amphitheater-like green space to take advantage of the excavation required
to remove 1922 Hall. The terraces will descend to a courtyard connected
to a café, library, and seminar room. One of the five residence
halls will house upperclassmen and will not be part of Butler College.
The site will also include separate homes for the masters of Butler, Whitman,
and Wilson colleges, on Elm Drive.

Henry N. Cobb of Pei Cobb Freed and Partners in New York City is the
project’s lead architect. Cobb designed the Friend Center, completed
in 2001, and his involvement at Princeton dates back to the construction
of Spelman Halls in the early 1970s.

Five of the existing Butler dorms — Lourie-Love, 1922, 1940, 1941,
and 1942 halls — were due for renovation, but in 2003, the University
decided to pursue a more dramatic reconstruction to prepare for Butler’s
future as a four-year residential college. Timing played a key role in
making the two-year renovation possible: With the completion of Whitman
College, the University will have 500 new beds available in the fall of
2007. The Butler complex, which will accommodate 290 undergraduates, is
scheduled to be ready in the fall of 2009, said Anne St. Mauro, the University’s
director of design and construction. Wu and 1915 halls will remain part
of Butler College, and Bloomberg Hall will be added as well.

The existing Hugh Stubbins-designed Butler dormitories, with their decorative
metal embattlements and waffle ceilings, have been “among the least
popular” residences on campus, Hlafter said, but appearance is not
the primary factor in their demise. The arrangement of rooms and the closed
layout of the buildings, he said, presented more significant problems.

Most of the rooms are single-occupancy, which an October 1964 PAW feature
attributed to “the new preference for ‘privatism.’”
But that arrangement proved less than ideal for the social goals of a
residential college, Hlafter said. Living spaces in the redesigned complex
will include four-person, two-bedroom suites with a common area and bathroom
and pairs of single rooms with a shared bathroom and foyer.

The new buildings will be configured with pedestrian traffic in mind.
“As [the buildings] currently exist, you walk around but you don’t
walk through,” Hlafter said. “We think the notion of having
more permeable spaces is what makes Princeton different and special, and
I think that’s what we are trying to achieve here.”

A front-page story in The Wall Street Journal in February drew
national attention to a case in which the plaintiffs — heirs to
the donors of a 1961 gift that transformed the Woodrow Wilson School —
allege that some of the money has not been used as it was intended when
the gift was made.

The article, and several that followed in other publications, focused
on pretrial court filings by plaintiffs including the son of the late
Charles Robertson ’26 and his wife, Marie. The Robertsons donated
$35 million to create the Robertson Foundation and support the graduate
program at the Woodrow Wilson School. The University was due to respond
by March 6.

In the Robertson filings, in New Jersey Superior Court, the plaintiffs
allege that $207 million from the gift — now worth an estimated
$650 million — has been diverted from its intended purpose. (The
plaintiffs’ figure includes calculations of appreciation since the
money was spent.)

The University disputes that figure, saying that most of the money was
handled properly. In a filing, a consultant for Princeton valued possible
overcharges to the foundation at about $15 million, including “offsets”
for instances in which the foundation had been “undercharged”
or “overcredited.” Princeton acknowledged that an accounting
practice that had led to some overcharging was “inappropriate”
and had been stopped. Princeton also says that under state law, only the
six years prior to the July 2002 filing of the lawsuit should be subject
to claims. Such a ruling in the case would substantially reduce the amount
of money at issue.

The newspapers also reported on a 2002 e-mail sent by then-University
Secretary Thomas Wright ’62 to President Tilghman and other administrators
shortly before the first foundation meeting to be chaired by Tilghman,
who was in her first academic year as University president and as president
of the foundation. Wright asked how much information to provide to the
foundation’s trustees about an issue that he expected would “greatly
upset” them: the use of $750,000 from foundation funds to support
graduate students in the politics and economics departments. In her deposition,
Tilghman said she believed it was a “legitimate judgment call”
for then-Dean Michael Rothschild to spend foundation money on the fellowships
because they supported faculty with joint appointments at the Wilson School.

The trustees were provided with financial tables that did not detail
the fellowships. Tilghman stated in her deposition that she did not know
who made that decision; asked whether she would agree that it was “not
complete disclosure,” Tilghman responded: “I agree with you.”
The plaintiffs’ attorney asked, “Who’s responsible for
that?” and Tilghman replied: “Ultimately, I’m responsible
for that.”

Tilghman’s statement showed her intention to “take responsibility
for providing greater transparency, and she has,” Robert K. Durkee
’69, University vice president and secretary, told PAW, pointing
to a number of changes in the foundation board’s operations.

In a statement, the University said, “All foundation trustees
agree that some aspects of historical foundation and University practices
need to be improved and that errors have been made over the years. ...
President Tilghman has significantly improved the foundation’s governance
procedures and as errors are being found, they are being corrected.”

The Robertsons’ filings were among a series of court filings by
both sides as they seek to have key issues in the case resolved before
trial. In January, the University asked the court to rule on three issues,
including a declaration that Princeton is and will continue to be the
sole beneficiary of the Robertson Foundation.

After visiting the rooms of newly admitted members and delivering a personal
welcome, members of Tower Club gathered in the courtyard between Blair
and Joline halls Feb. 10 and celebrated with plenty of shaving cream.
(That’s a can of Red Bull, not beer, in the center of the photo.)
Other selective clubs did their pickups the same day. The Interclub Council
said 396 of the 633 students who bickered one of the five selective eating
clubs were accepted.

The number of applicants for admission has set a record for the second
straight year, with 17,478 STUDENTS seeking spots in
the Class of 2010. The number is 6 percent higher than last year’s
record of 16,510 applicants. Dean of Admission Janet Rapelye said the
University expanded its recruitment efforts “to include students
from all socioeconomic backgrounds,” and traveled to more countries
than in the past. Eighty percent of the applications were filed online,
with a majority using the Common Application. Students will be notified
of admission by early April.

Senior DAN-EL PADILLA PERALTA, a classics major from
New York City, will receive the 2006 Daniel M. Sachs Class of 1960 Graduating
Scholarship. One of the highest honors given to Princeton undergraduates,
the award will pay for tuition and living expenses as Peralta attends
Worcester College at Oxford to earn a second bachelor’s degree in
a classics program drawing from language and literature, history, philosophy,
and archaeology. Peralta, who also is pursuing a certificate in the Woodrow
Wilson School, hopes to teach classics at the university level while working
to promote equal access to education for minority students.

When MERRILL LYNCH & CO. announced plans to rename
its U.S. mutual funds as Princeton Portfolio Research & Management,
University officials were not flattered. “The University was not
consulted about Merrill Lynch’s intention to trade on the University’s
reputation in renaming its family of funds,” said Cass Cliatt ’96,
a Princeton spokeswoman. “It’s a matter of concern, and we
are addressing this with Merrill Lynch.”

The company issued a statement saying that the new brand “was
not named to suggest any association with the University,” but Cliatt
termed the response “not sufficient.” The issue was defused,
however, when Merrill Lynch traded its mutual-fund business for a stake
in BlackRock, a major asset-management company. BlackRock said it would
brand the funds under its own name.

DON BETTERTON, director of undergraduate financial
aid since 1974, will retire June 30. Betterton played a key role in Princeton’s
adoption of its no-loan policy, under which the University replaced loans
in its financial aid packages with grants. A record 51 percent of undergraduates
are on financial aid this year. Betterton will be succeeded by senior
associate director ROBIN MOSCATO, a 23-year member of
his staff.

When asked about his quirky eating habits in a March 2004 Daily
Princetonian interview, creative writing professor Paul Muldoon confessed
his love for beet roots. “If somebody would make beet ice cream,”
he said, “I’d be very happy.” Librarian Ben Primer remembered
the quotation last fall when he won a charity auction to design a flavor
at The Bent Spoon, a Palmer Square ice cream shop, and when Muldoon spoke
at the Friends of the Princeton University Library dinner Jan. 28, Primer
honored him with “PAUL MULDOON’S RUTABAGA SORBET.”
Though not exactly beet-based, the veggie delight drew chuckles from the
audience and a few positive reviews from tasters. But parting with the
sweet caused little sorrow for The Bent Spoon’s mix-masters. “I
could tell they didn’t want to sell it in their store,” said
Primer, above right, with Muldoon and some of the leftover sorbet. “They
were happy to unload all 10 pounds on me.”

The University announced a new program, SCHOLARS IN THE NATION’S
SERVICE, designed to encourage students to work for the federal
government. “Government service has to be the core of public service,”
said Anne-Marie Slaughter ’80, dean of the Woodrow Wilson School,
in making the announcement Feb. 24. The six-year program will offer public
policy courses and a government internship between the junior and senior
year, two years of work for a federal agency, and a master’s degree
in public affairs from the Wilson School. The first five Princeton undergraduates
will be selected this fall. The Wilson School hopes to expand the program
to include five incoming M.P.A. students during the 2006-07 graduate admission
process. The program’s graduate students will be supported by the
Robertson Foundation and will be known as Charles and Marie Robertson
Scholars in the Nation’s Service.

The work of 21 ALUMNI WRITERS is featured in the latest
issue of The Nassau Literary Review, which “seeks to connect
the University’s student writing community with its talented alumni,”
according to Christine Malvasi ’06, co-editor-in-chief. About half
the work is previously unpublished; among the contributors are W.S. Merwin
’48, Galway Kinnell ’48, John McPhee ’53, and Jonathan
Safran Foer ’99. Subscription information is available at www.princeton.edu/~nasslit.